-------- Original Message -------- Subject: For FC--EU Constitution has no first amendment Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 05:45:14 -0400 From: James Lucier <james.lucier@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0425/097.html Companies, People, Ideas Liberty, European-Style Dan Seligman, 04.25.05 The EU has funny ideas about human rights. For example, the idea that free speech is not among those rights. Viewed from 3,000 miles away, the European Union looks like a kind of parallel United States. On both sides of the Atlantic, living standards are high, government is democratic and educated people speak English. View it up close and you see striking differences. One of them is that America has the First Amendment and Europe doesn't. You can argue endlessly about whether the Founding Fathers intended the free speech clause--"Congress shall make no law Š abridging the freedom of speech"--to protect flag-burning and nude dancing. But news stories from assorted Old World democracies make a persuasive case that they badly need a First Amendment over there. Not impeded by one, governments engage in a degree of speech suppression unimaginable in the U.S. A lot of the suppression takes place via national "speech codes" somewhat similar to those imposed on numerous American campuses in the 1990s but repeatedly struck down by First Amendment rulings. Here, for example, is a news story (broadcast by the BBC) reporting that Croatia, currently a candidate for EU membership, is broadening its laws against "hate speech" so that it would be criminal to engage in "spreading racism and xenophobia." Here is another story reporting that a respected political scientist in Finland--he happens to be the father of the country's prime minister--was being investigated by the "central criminal investigation department" for an interview he gave to a newspaper, in which he expressed the view that Africa's economic problems reflected low intelligence, not the heritage of colonialism. (He was eventually cleared.) [...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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